


Boxes

by 2whitie



Category: Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Fluff, Gen, Mental Instability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:14:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25603402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2whitie/pseuds/2whitie
Summary: Artemis is recovering from the events of TAC. While waiting for him to recover, Butler and Holly discuss another genius they both know. WRITTEN FOR THE ARTEMIS FOWL SUMMERTIME FIC EXCHANGE
Relationships: Artemis Fowl II & Minerva Paradizo, Domovoi Butler & Artemis Fowl II
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28
Collections: 🌊Artemis Fowl summertime fanfic exchange  🌊





	Boxes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mentosmorii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mentosmorii/gifts).



_“Friendship…is born at the moment when one man says to another ‘What! You too?-C.S. Lewis_

Holly gave the bag a single poke. “Is it tradition for a hurt human to receive one of these…care packages?”

“Depends on the human,” responded Butler, barely resisting the urge to give a knowledgeable shrug. “Some humans prefer to show their affection with physical touch or acts of service. Minerva’s a gifter.”

Holly raised a thin eyebrow in a way that suggestion inquisitiveness rather than doubt. “Gifts don’t really sound like something he needs. He’s not exactly short on material possessions.”

Butler shot another guilty look--the fifth one in the last hour—towards Artemis’s hospital room. “Not material possessions, no.”

It hadn’t taken long for the warlock medics to prioritize the removal of the rune on Artemis’s neck over treatment for his Atlantis Complex. The rune, they reasoned, played with the mind, and all interfering forces should be removed before therapy could even begin

The problem then became _how._

For Holly, the removal of the rune had been simple: apply a numbing pad, laser the offending rune off, then clean any skin damage with a shot of magic. Done, done, and done.

Artemis was a bit more of a problem.

First off was the liability issue. Even if everyone (including Artemis) liked to pretend otherwise, Artemis was a minor, and as such, could not sign off on a surgery. One bright spark mentioned that since Artemis was technically eighteen, the human world recognized him as an adult, and therefore the People could too. Although clever, it was just as quickly acknowledged that if the People were to abide by the human legal system, Artemis was still unfit for legal decisions due to his mental state.

(The problem became moot when Butler strode into the hospital with an angry Angeline on speakerphone. Any and all hurdles were leaped at the speed of Mama Bear.)

The second issue was one of procedure. Holly had been a quick fix because magic could be used to fix up any and all damage. Unfortunately for Artemis, all use of magic on his system was suspended until it was determined whether the use of magic would speed the Complex’s grip on the boy’s brain; a problem made worse once one considered that _both_ Atlantis Complex and Turnball’s rune festered in the neural system. What should have been a simple procedure morphed into a question that would plague medical warlock exams for centuries to come.

Eventually, a solution was worked out. It wasn’t an elegant solution, true, and Artemis would probably have scarring on one side of his neck for the rest of his life, but it was _a_ solution. The only one they had.

The only one that wouldn’t kill him.

The first part of the process involved knocking the Irish teen unconscious. This…procedure was not something that Artemis—or Orion—would want to be awake for. The head medic had already come, administered the sedative, and gone, leaving the human for the warlocks.

It was a blessing in disguise that the Council forbid Angeline coming down a second time, thought Holly, as she shifted her gaze from Minerva’s care-package to the still form of her friend. She had seen enough of the human world to know how advanced, _how_ _alien_ fairy technology could appear. From an outsider’s perspective, _from Angeline’s perspective,_ a young boy was lying unnaturally still, suspended in mid-air by an unseen force, rhythmically scanned by a pale blue light; unaware and helpless, abandoned and alone.

Holly had grown up around this kind of healing tech all her life, had benefited from it personally. But all it took was one look at Butler, one look at his face, and she was once again forced to view it from his oh-so-human point of view.

Everything about this was terrible.

Holly gave the bag another poke, drawing the manservant’s eyes back down. “So, how’d she know Artemis was sick? You know, in time to lob her care package onto Angeline?”

Butler took the bait for what it was. The surgeon wasn’t scheduled to come in for another hour; he could allow himself this gift of distraction. “I think she already had most of it for his birthday.”

“I didn’t know they were birthday gift close.”

The massive manservant tilted his head. “Artemis has always been a bit of a compartmentalizer. Family in one box, academics in another, the People in a third, Fowl Industries in a fourth. Had they met under normal circumstances, I think Artemis would have just put Minerva inside the academic box and been done, but since…,”

“But since they met through one of _our_ little escapades, he doesn’t really know where to put her,” the elf finished.

Butler nodded a confirmation. “She’s living proof that some people just don’t fit into the boxes. She’s connected to you, a fairy, but she also knows me, a family member. Even a few of his colleagues at MIT know her. And their fathers have lots of mutual friends. They were bound to meet, sooner or later. And they both know it.”

“I thought Artemis was the one with the doctorate in psychology, not you.”

“Eh. Minerva’s an easy read, once you get to know her.”

Holly was _very_ surprised at this, and she didn’t mind showing it, “She visits Artemis that much?”

“Well, we…we were both left holding the smoking gun, so to speak. After Tai Pei. After…well, you know.”

She did not know. “I thought the LEP cleaned everything up.”

Butler gave a dark chuckle, and it was anything but amused. “With Ark Sool in charge? Please. Minerva and I ran from Kong’s men for nearly a week, trying to give them a moving target so that they wouldn’t double back for her brother or father. Nobody was sent up to cover for Artemis either. I know it’s hard to remember, but Artemis isn’t just some random rich kid. He’s the heir to one of the biggest corporations in the world, one of the oldest families in Europe. The news stations hounded his family for months. His parents thought they’d lost their only son. Some trashy media outlets looked at the fact that his father disappeared as well and started loudly wondering exactly who his mother would fail to take out next in a quest for the Fowl fortune…Did Artemis really not tell you any of this?”

A specific kind of numbness began to push on her chest, claw at her lungs, congeal over her feet. “He told me about the twins.”

Butler pinched the bridge of his nose. It was hard to tell if he had picked up the habit from his charge or if it was the other way around. “He was doing so well after he came back. When he started to take a dive, I thought that maybe everything was finally hitting him, you know? But it wasn’t that…it wasn’t that at all. It was the Complex. He was literally driving himself insane, and I just sat there and called it normal.”

There was anger in the voice, but mostly self-loathing. Thick, suffocating, sticky loathing.

In that instant, Holly vowed to take Trouble aside and explain the situation to him. Trouble may dislike, maybe even hate Artemis, but he wasn’t cruel. Artemis was the only one who went to Hybras that hadn’t been forced into a few therapy sessions, and Holly would eat a stinkworm if a halfway competent therapist wouldn’t have spotted the Complex in its beginning stages. “I said it before and I’ll say it again. Artemis needs help, and he will get it. This isn’t his fault. Not even Artemis Fowl can fight his own brain.”

Butler’s eyes started to drift back to the window, leaving Holly to fumble for conversation. “So. How _is_ Artemis’s blonde twin doing?”

This time, Butler’s chuckle was real. “Artemis can say ‘Oh we’re so alike’ or whatever sub-par Disney punchline he wants to spout until the cows come home. They are nothing alike. Seriously. Nothing.”

“Really? Nothing?”

“Okay. They have _some_ things in common. But really, once you get past the surface stuff, they are very different people.”

Holly was not convinced.

“Artemis cares how others perceive him. A lot. Sharp suits, dramatic presentations, I mean, you know him.”

Oh, Holly had known that little tidbit about him ever since she’d woken up in his basement.

“Minerva does not care. She literally ran that entire thing with Number One in _light-up tennis shoes_. One time, in front of her soon-to-be boyfriend, she cleared a whole cake. All on her own. She. Does. Not Care.”

Holly skipped right over the boyfriend comment, as that looked like a minefield of teenage drama that should not be touched. “A whole cake?”

“A whole cake,” Butler confirmed. “I was both impressed and horrified.”

“And she’s still skinny?”

“Juliet want to punch her,” confirmed Butler. “Anyway, after she realized that the Fowls thought I’d been driven insane from guilt, she made it a point to call and visit. Dropped off random books she hoped I’d like, saying that she ‘needed something reliable to take care of me when she was away.’”

Holly thought about that for a moment. It was hard to say if such a statement was sad of endearing. In the end, she decided it was a little bit of both. “Do you think Minerva would be good for LEP work?”

Had it been any other fairy than Holly who had asked, Butler would have terminated the inquiry with extreme prejudice. But this was Holly, who he knew had no interest in _ever_ working with Minerva, and who was waiting outside the hospital room for an example of a kid who grew up too fast. “Remember when I told Artemis that seeing was his gift? Seeing what the rest of us couldn’t?”

The elven captain nodded.

“I think…I think it goes a bit farther than that. Artemis is very aware of his position in the world. He likes masterminding the world’s chessboard. Instead of trying to work his way to the top of the system, he uses his intellect to mold the world around _him._ Enemies to allies, problems into tools, morals into afterthoughts. You’ve seen him work.”

Indeed she had. She kind of wanted to probe a little more, ask for more examples, but the manservant was on a roll, and she’d never heard him talk so much before.

Maybe she’d always asked the wrong questions.

“Minerva has many of the same interests, but that’s about as far as it goes. Minerva is a very much in-the-moment person and doesn’t knew her limits the way Artemis does. I mean, when Artemis decided to pick a fight with an entire magical race, he took me and Juliet with him, and kept his parents out of it. Clear boundaries. A beginning and an end. When she did the same, she took her whole family, full stop, and wanted to make it a multi-year study. There’s no “work friends” vs. “school friends” with her. She just takes everyone with her, for everything. She isn’t cut out for this type of work, these types of secrets. Never will be.”

It was a lot to think about, and the two sat in a comfortable silence for a while.

“Does Artemis know all this?” Holly finally asked.

It felt like the right kind of question.

Butler shrugged. “I don’t know. I know that they really _get_ each other, being ambitious prodigies of the same age and all, but I don’t know how much they talk about how they handle the big metaphysical stuff.”

Holly’s gaze turned back towards the care package. It was a bulging backpack, nothing special. And it was clearly Artemis’s business. With the way his Complex was heading, he didn’t need any more reason to be paranoid than he already had. “Maybe they have had that discussion. In their own way.”

Butler looked around the waiting area. It was empty, save for an occasional clerk walking in, updating something on a touch pad, then slinking back out. “I need to look through it anyway. See if anything in here is a banned object.”

The elf punched one of the tree trunks masquerading as Butler’s legs and walked over to the door, facing away, standing guard.

Glad he hadn’t had to say more, the manservant carefully opened the bag, taking note of all the item’s positioning. Like he’d said earlier, it was always hard to get something for Artemis--What did you get for the boy in a castle with fairies on his heels?--but Minerva, despite of, or likely because of, her own wealth, didn’t go for flashy. She got him the small things, the types of things he could use everywhere, with anyone, no matter what box he put them in.

An anthology of Tolkien’s works.

A container of London Fog tea.

A blue tie.

A set of plushies shaped like the germs that Artemis had so recently authored a paper on.

A trashy romance.

A set of paints.

Butler smiled and looked at the boy through the window. Minerva wasn’t destined to be his great love, nor his rival, nor was she supposed to fix his charge. He would have to do that himself.

She was a fifteen-year-old girl who chose to be Artemis’s friend, his acquaintance, his contemporary; A friend without a box; a friend who could help connect the boxes.

A friend in need; a friend indeed.

_Fin_

A/N

This was written for the 2020 Artemis Fowl Summertime Fanfic Exchange for the wonderful and talented mentomorii.

Prompt: Minerva didn't get much time in the books beyond the fifth installation in the series — in many ways, she's a foil for Artemis, but she's not developed much beyond that. With this prompt, I'd love to see an exploration of her character! What was her childhood like? Does she have any friends her own age? What is her personality? And so on and so forth.

I spent nearly a month banging my head against the wall, writing a stakeout with Artemis and Minerva, but no matter what, it just didn’t come. In a complete fit of pique, I deleted everything and wrote this bad boi in three hours. Funnily enough, my best Minerva is everyone else talking about her. Who knew?


End file.
